Funny name "Bungle Bungles”! It seems someone “bungled" up the spelling of Bundle, the name of the local grass! However, now the heritage listed park is also called by its aboriginal name: Purnululu, meaning “Fretting Sands”.
On our way there, we stayed among roaming cattle and screeching flocks of corellas at a beautiful free camp at Mary-pool.
We gave the giant 300,000 year old “Wolfe Creek” meteorite crater ( a 200 km return trip) a miss, but stopped off at Halls Creek to see the so-called “China Wall”, an unusual, exposed limestone ridge. It really looks a bit like the Great Wall of China. Well, I think since the end of the gold rush this little town hasn’t got much else going for it!
We just made it to the Bungle Bungles before the end of the month when everything shuts down here. Luckily there is a terrific caravan park just off the highway as the 53km dirt road into the park is now, at the end of the dry season too rough to do towing a caravan. As a matter of fact the road was so rocky and corrugated that I was worried my teeth would fall out! But after letting the tyres down the dipping, curving, shaking rollercoaster ride in the Ford Ranger was fun! And then there were the amazing Bungle Bungles in front of us, looking just like giant easter eggs!
It is quite amazing seeing the orange and grey striped domes, a fluke of nature: the grey layers obtained their colour from cyanobacteria, while the orange layers are the result of oxidised iron compound. I admired Austin who with his ‘dodgy' knees powered through all the recommended class 4 and 5 walks at 38-39 degrees heat!
We saved the more shady walk through the Echidna Chasm for the afternoon. With its red conglomerate hills and green livistona palms this was definitely my favourite place! Here are some photos from Purnululu:
Here is the bar and meeting place of our caravan park. The fire added to the ambience, but at 34 degrees at 7pm nobody was game to sit close to it!